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An advocate of voluntary programs to curb nutrient runoff from farms is President
Donald Trump’s pick to head the Agriculture Department’s work on domestic farming
and conservation.

His supporters say that, if confirmed, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey
(R) would be instrumental in negotiations on conservation issues in the next farm
bill, which Congress is expected to debate next year. Regulation-wary agricultural
interests have also praised Northey’s approach of offering financial incentives for
farmers to take up environmentally friendly practices—such as planting cover crops
in fields and vegetation buffers around streams.

“Bill will be a tremendous voice, an articulate voice in agriculture,” Gary Baise,
an agriculture and environmental attorney with Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Matz PC in
Washington told Bloomberg BNA.

Agriculture is “part of the problem” of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in water
bodies, Baise said. “Bill can help us cure that problem.”

Through his spokesman, Northey declined to comment on how he would approach water
quality efforts as undersecretary.

Northey’s nomination to serve as undersecretary of farm production and conservation
was announced late Sept. 1. He was first elected Iowa’s secretary of agriculture in
2006.

Boom for Cover Crops

A fourth-generation farmer with rumored aspirations for higher office—Iowa insiders
have floated his name for Senate and gubernatorial races—Northey is best known for
his push for financial incentives for farmers to prevent fertilizers from washing
off their fields and into rivers that lead to the Gulf of Mexico.

The popularity of cover crops, plants that help keep nutrients in the soil and out
of waterways, has grown quickly under Northey. More than 317,000 acres of the crops
were planted via government assistance programs in 2015, a nearly ninefold increase
since 2011.

Environmental advocates, however, have said such programs yield few benefits to water
quality.

Since 2014, the state has poured $46.6 million into the department’s Iowa Water Quality
Initiative, part of a larger effort subsidized by federal and nonprofit funds to reduce
by 45 percent nitrogen and phosphorus runoff to waterways.

‘Dead Zone’ The Size of New Jersey

Nitrogen and phosphorus promote the growth of algae, which robs water of dissolved
oxygen and creates large “dead zones” where aquatic life cannot survive. The dead
zone in the Gulf of Mexico this year covered a record 8,776 square miles—an area the
size of New Jersey. Nitrogen compounds in drinking water also can lead to a potentially
fatal condition in infants.

Progress on reducing nutrient runoff is still far away, according to a 2016
report. Sources of nitrogen from agriculture and stormwater runoff must be cut by 125,870
tons to meet Iowa’s 45 percent goal. Phosphorus must be reduced by 4,872 tons. Unlike
industrial plants or wastewater treatment plants, agriculture is exempt from permitting
requirements under the Clean Water Act.

Des Moines Water Works Chief Executive Officer Bill Stowe, head of the Des Moines,
Iowa, public water utility, slammed Northey for overseeing a strategy that led to
the largest-ever Gulf of Mexico dead zone, with Iowa contributing 40 percent of the
nitrogen, he said.

“Sustainable agriculture and consumer protection will take a huge step backwards as
Bill Northey promotes the status quo and industrial agriculture,” Stowe told Bloomberg
BNA in an email.

The board of trustees for Des Moines Water Works sued the board of supervisors in
10 agricultural drainage districts in 2015, alleging that the nitrogen pollution cost
the utility more than $1.5 million. Northey criticized it as a legal attempt to regulate
agricultural practices.

Northey called the lawsuit, which was unsuccessful in state court, “a needless distraction
from our collaborative, research-based approach.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Tiffany Stecker in Washington at
tstecker@bna.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rachael Daigle at
rdaigle@bna.com

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